Writing, Literature, Poetry, & Drama
Appel's book views mid-20th century jazz through a modernist lens and finds it a worthy part of that "great tradition" in the arts. Lewis believes that this approach, while valid in its intent, overlooks the unique features of jazz that make it most compelling as art. He argues that European modernists and African-American jazz musicians had different understandings of apparently similar themes, such as a primitive African "utopia", or of techniques such as collage.
Harris' essay examines the ways authors Amiri Baraka and Ishmael Reed translated elements of jazz-particularly free jazz-into literary expression. Baraka believed that free jazz captured what was most valuable in the black tradition and updated it to respond to contemporary phenomena. Harris makes reference to the authors' written work and to Baraka's actual spoken performances.
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This resource is the Introduction to Locke and Murray's edited volume "Thriving On A Riff." The editors note that there is "a distinction between the study of jazz itself (in a nuts-and-bolts musicological sense) and the study of things that are jazz related" and that "Thriving on a Riff belongs to the latter category and sharpens its focus further to examine two of the many cultural forms affected by African American music: literature and film." The Introduction surveys the contributions found in the full volume.
A prevalent view in writings about African-American culture holds that music has been superior to other art forms, and that to attain similar achievements black literature, dance, and theatre should model themselves on black music. Edwards' aim is to counter these assumptions with reference to the literary influences and aspirations of none other than Duke Ellington.
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Gerald Majer, a native of Chicago's racially segregated South Side, has written a book about its musical life. The Velvet Lounge combines his personal experiences with the story, or stories, of his community, merging his account of the music and with the difficult conditions that shaped it. The result is an innovative combination of history, subjective experience of that history, and reflection on its meaning--that is, of fact, literature, and criticism.
Seeing Jazz refers to both visualizations of jazz and to understanding it: to get hip and then hipper, to say “yes, I see.” Modernist painters, sculptors, photographers, poets, novelists, and essayists have plied their own materials to evoke their experience of jazz in visual or verbal terms. This book illustrates how the music has made its cross-disciplinary mark.
Gerald Majer, a native of Chicago's racially segregated South Side, has written a book about its musical life. Majer combines his personal experiences with the story, or stories, of his community, merging his account of the music and with the difficult conditions that shaped it. The result is an innovative combination of history, subjective experience of that history, and reflection on its meaning-that is, of fact, literature, and criticism. In the first portion of this wide-ranging chapter, Majer discusses the music of Hammond organ players Wild Bill Davis and Jimmy Smith.
Gerald Majer, a native of Chicago's racially segregated South Side, has written a book about its musical life. The Velvet Lounge combines his personal experiences with the story, or stories, of his community, merging his account of the music and with the difficult conditions that shaped it. The result is an innovative combination of history, subjective experience of that history, and reflection on its meaning-that is, of fact, literature, and criticism.
This essay explores the sexual politics of women's blues of the 1920s and compares it to black women's fiction during the same period. Carby argues that classic blues singers Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Ethel Waters had more latitude to challenge patriarchy and expose the contradictions of black women's experience than black women writers-though the latter's work has been more thoroughly investigated for insights into these issues.
Iyer asks how an improvised solo can convey meaning or “tell a story.” He develops a theory of jazz improvisation around his idea of hearing the body. To Iyer, the effectiveness of improvisation, particularly its rhythmic aspect, depends on an awareness by producers and listeners of the physical actions involved and their situation within a shared social environment, which creates a cascade of meaningful events in an “exploded” (i.e., not conventionally linear) narrative.
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